A History Of The Great War
by thisissparta789789
Summary: This look at the Great War by the same author of "The Rise and Fall of the Authoritarianist Party of Vacuo" shows how the first major conflict of the 20th Century of Remnant changed the face of the world forever, and set up today's political climate.
1. Beginnings

The year was 1935. Remnant was in a state of peace, at the moment. Not a single large war had been fought since the 3rd Vale-Vacuo War of 1880, which saw a shockingly-victorious Vacuo take land from Vale. Business was booming. Combat against the forces of Grimm was becoming more and more efficient by the day as piston-engined airplanes and even rudimentary airships took to the skies to both spread commerce and wage war. No longer were people left stranded on the ground to fight them. All it took to possibly wipe out a whole nest was send a gang of 10 aircraft to bomb and strafe the area, though ground personnel would still be needed to guide the planes and evacuate civilians from harm.

Of the 4 Great Kingdoms, Vacuo benefited the most. Having shed its image of poor nomads who used rudimentary technology, the kingdom enjoyed a more respected image. Within the kingdom, though, tensions had built up between the city-dwellers, who had embraced modern life for the past 150+ years, and the nomads of the rural areas beyond the walls of the cities, who often resented the city-dwellers for being "immoral" and "stagnant." There were occasional riots between city-dwellers and nomads who had recently moved into the cities to find work.

None of this would be possible without 2 outside players: Vale, and the Schnee Dust Corporation. The SDC, having been founded in Vale some decades ago but also having about half of its operations in Mantle due to family ties to the kingdom, was a major player in dust mining, and its CEO at the time, Adolf Schnee III, considered expanding the SDC's reach into other industries, especially transport and weapons. They had made a contract with Vacuo's military to supply dust and design weapons for them in 1927. Vale sank billions of its own Marks into Vacuo's development, ensuring a very friendly relationship between the two kingdoms. In response, Mantle and Mistral began cooperating with each other and several lesser nations to compete with the Vacuo-Vale Alliance, which proved to be tense at times due to some issues between the two countries.

Even though this was a time of peace, tensions had begun to reach a boiling point due to the lack of war. All it would take was a single spark to ignite a ferocious war between all the kingdoms and lesser nations of Remnant. That spark turned out to be in the small Principality of Azimuth, located on the southern coast between Vacuo and Vale but backed by Mistral and Mantle.

The prince of the country, Vladimir V, was a ruthless ruler. He had brutally put down a workers' strike in the coal mining industry in 1916 in one of his first acts as prince, killing over 300 striking miners. He also regularly persecuted artists who were not on government payroll, fearing they would produce anti-government propaganda. He authorized his secret police to carry out assassinations both in the country and abroad of both suspected and confirmed anti-government artists.

One of these targeted artists was Mikhail Pavel. Having fled to Vale in 1914 to escape Vladimir V's equally ruthless father, Nikolai III, he was a vocal critic of the government abroad. Vale agreed to protect him from assassination attempts with several soldiers used as bodyguards. However, this would not be enough.

On March 1, 1935, 3 men killed the 4 soldiers assigned to protect Pavel in his apartment as he slept before assassinating him. The act was carried out at exactly midnight with silenced pistols and throwing knives to conceal their acts. They fled before police were able to arrive on scene. However, in their haste to escape, they left a detailed plan of their activities at the scene, exposing Azimuth's involvement.

Vale's parliament immediately condemned Azimuth for the killing of its soldiers the next day. Mistral decided to mobilize its army and move several army groups to the eastern coast. This angered Vale further.

On March 3, the SDC made the unprecedented decision of suspending its operations in Mantle due to its ally's actions the day before. Also, another artist was assassinated in the country of North Dragonica, also by Azimuth. On March 4, North Dragonica kicked things off by declaring war on Azimuth. This started a massive chain reaction of war declarations to due to alliance agreements put in place before.

Mistral, Mantle, Dragonica, and Hachure all declared war on North Dragonica by March 7, as per an agreement between them. On March 10, Azimuth captured the ambassador from Vale and killed him and his family as he tried to flee. On March 11, Vale and Vacuo both declared war on Azimuth. By March 15, Mistral, Mantle, Dragonica, and Hachure had done the same. Stadia, a small nation on Lindwurm, declared war on the MM Powers on March 17. Alidade, a small nation next to Mistral, joined the war on the side of the Allied Powers on March 20. On the same day, Meridia joined the MM Powers and sent troops to Mistral to assist. On March 25, Volos joined the Allied Powers.

Now, the whole world was at war, and only those who had extensive knowledge of the technological advances in warfare could know just how awful it would become.

* * *

Vacuo has such a rather... Interesting... History that it deserves its own mention. At the time of the war beginning, it, like the other 3 kingdoms, had a royal family. Its royal family was biracial, however, unlike the other kingdoms. You see, there are two primary ethnic groups in Vacuo: The Vacuouans (Les Vacuouains), who peppered the far north of the country away from the deserts, and the Han people (漢人), who were separated from their eastern Han brethren in Vale by various natural barriers in the far southwestern part of the country, and generally had a more nomadic culture than the Han of Vale. There have been a fair share of kings and queens from both ethnic groups. As of 1935, its king was King Philippe II, and the queen was Queen Biyu, a member of a Han noble family.

The first signs of human civilization in the area date from around 2500 B.C. (Before Creation), primarily centered around the Oasis of Tongmen in the south and the port of Alenroux in the north. The modern Kingdom of Vacuo was proclaimed by the marriage of the first King, Bohai I, to Queen Veronique of Alenroux, in 344 A.D. (After Dust), making it the second oldest kingdom. Tongmen was the first capital of Vacuo, and its citizens enjoyed life away from the creatures of Grimm due to natural barriers and city walls.

The first signs of trouble came in 844 A.D., when Dragonica, a state in the continent of Lindwurm that was a dependant of Vacuo, split and declared total independence, starting a war. Though Vacuo won the war by 850, Dragonica remained separate. Additionally, the Azimuthian (Aзимуткие) tribes united into a principality in 892, causing another war. This time, Vacuo lost in 895.

In the 900s and 1000s, pirates from the tribes of Vale frequently attacked the southern coast of Vacuo. In 1077, King Jianyu I ordered Vacuouan forces to invade the eastern half of what is now Vale to try and pacify the area, fighting various Han, Valeanian, and Cymrunian (y Cymry) tribes. This proved to be a fruitless endeavour, and Vacuouan forces evacuated the area in 1131.

In 1235, Mantle and Vacuo went to war over a trade deal gone bad. Vacuo was defeated in 1242. Mantle then forced Vacuo to sign an unequal treaty that gave Mantle extensive trading rights and access to all of its ports.

In 1465, Vacuo, Mantle, and Mistral decided to invade the Valeanian region jointly and split the area between them. However, the many Valeanian, Han, and Cymrunian tribes all united under the leadership of Berwyn of Trefaldwyn, and they proceeded to defeat the combined strength of the 3 kingdoms. In 1480, Berwyn of Trefaldwyn united all of the tribes into the 4th and final Great Kingdom, the Kingdom of Vale, as Berwyn I, or Berwyn the Great.

In 1522, Vale and Vacuo went to war after King Louis III decided to try to conquer Vale again, this time by itself. Vacuo lost, again, this time in 1530. In 1534, Vacuo invaded Azimuth with the intent to conquer it. Though they held onto it for 26 years, in 1560, Vacuouan forces were forced to evacuate due to a highly organized resistance movement cutting into their forces. By now, Vacuo had become the laughing stock of Remnant's 4 Great Kingdoms.

In 1677, Vacuo suffered a coup d'etat by an army general named Henri LaFleur, who established himself as the new king. He ruled for 23 years until loyalists of the old regime overthrew and executed him. As the 1700s rolled on for Vacuo, they slowly began to modernize under the guidance of several kings and even one queen regnant.

In 1807, Vale and Vacuo went to war for a second time. This time, the war was fought to a respectable draw in 1813. A peace treaty was signed that restored the status quo before the war. Though neither side won, some began to note that Vacuo was beginning to grow stronger. In 1880, Vale and Vacuo went to war for a third time. This time, Vacuo crushed Valeanian forces and proceeded to win the war in 1883, shocking the rest of the world. Their win was credited to the well-placed use of new technology, such as machine guns and tear gas, by progressive Vacuouan forces. This pressured the rest of Remnant to quickly adopt this new technology of a much larger scale than they had adopted it before.

By 1935, Vacuo had taken its place as the second most powerful kingdom of the 4 Great Kingdoms. It seemed like nothing would stop them from rising to the top. Additionally, a peace had been reached between their former rivals in Vale.

The Great War was about to change all of that.


	2. The First Two Years, and Technology

On April 1, 1935, Vale and Vacuo jointly invaded Azimuth. They were met by a force of over 300,000 Azimuthian soldiers and over 750,000 troops from Mantle and Mistral. Their initial offensive was stopped on April 12, 1935, after they gained a measly 32 miles of land. On April 25, a counteroffensive saw MM Powers forces tear Vale and Vacuo apart by creating a thin stretch of MM-controlled land that stretched from the Azimuth-Vale-Vacuo border to the Northern coastline. This land, just 4 miles wide in some parts and 12 miles wide at its largest, became known as "No Man's Land." The Vale-Vacuo front changed little for the next 2 years after this event.

By July 12, 1935, the entirety of Lindwurm was under MM control, the MM Powers having crushed Volos, Stadia, and North Dragonica. On the Alidade-Mistral front, the war had been fought to a draw as Alidadian forces, assisted by a Vacuouan Expeditionary Force and a Valeanian Expeditionary Force, kept Mistral at bay following the Battle of Kumawara, which saw a total death toll of over 65,000 soldiers on both sides over the span of 4 days of fighting.

Until 1937, the war was basically a standstill. Vacuo and Vale kept hitting hard at MM Powers forces in Azimuth and No Man's Land, but they could not break the siege due to the strong naval forces of Mistral and Mantle. At the Alidade-Mistral front, costly battles began to wear the patience of Allied Powers forces thin, and a mutiny in January of 1937 by Vacuouan forces led to punitive punishments by their commanders.

On June 12, 1936, Allied forces invaded the Mistralian island of Menagerie, the traditional homeland of the faunus race, with a force of over 1,000,000 soldiers pulled from every country on their side. They landed at the Western half of the island, and though they took control of extreme Western end, they found it difficult to go beyond the coastal regions due to the strong defences of the MM Powers. An offensive attempted by the Allied Powers starting on November 10, 1935 proved to be a complete failure and the deadliest battle of the war. From November 10, 1935 to January 6, 1937, when the offensive was called off, a total of 2,000,000+ combatants on both sides plus civilians were killed. On January 20, all Allied forces evacuated Menagerie.

The trauma of the Menagerie Campaign is believed to have finally pushed some within the Vacuouan government over the edge. On January 25, a telegram was sent to the King of Vacuo. In it, it read that if he did not contact the MM Powers to negotiate a changing of sides, he would be overthrown and killed. He reluctantly agreed. On March 1, 1937, a telegram was sent to Mantle and Mistral of their intentions. They were overjoyed, and from there, the 3 began plotting.

Meanwhile, events in Azimuth caused the another spanner to be thrown into the cogs of the war. The Allied Powers reluctantly backed a coup d'etat and subsequent civil war started by Collectivist rebels that sought to create the first Collectivist state in Remnant. It started with the mass murder of the entire royal family, including the Prince, on February 18, 1937. By March 3, 1937, Mistralian and Mantillian forces had taken command of all of the anti-Collectivist forces in Azimuth, while Collectivist forces battled with Allied support. On April 3, 1937, Azimuth pulled out of the war for good with the victory of the Collectivists, breaking an agreement they made with the Allied Powers. Even so, no one managed to fight Azimuth for the rest of the war. The Vale-Vacuo-Azimuth front continued on, though, since Mistral and Mantle had constructed a new port city on the northern coast of No Man's Land.

On April 28, 1937, the guns on the Vale-Vacuo-Azimuth Front and the Alidade-Mistral on the MM Powers side went silent suddenly. Valeanian forces were confused as to why. Then, on April 29, their Vacuouan Allies suddenly turned on them.

In the Betrayal of the Valeanians and the Alidadians, Vacuouan soldiers fired on their former allies. They showed no mercy, either. Even Mistral and Mantle were shocked at the level of brutality Vacuouan forces showed against their former allies. They tortured and executed male POWs and male Valeanian civilians, raped female POWs and female Valeanian civilians, purged their own forces of all pro-Valeanian elements, and often desecrated their bodies by publicly parading them. From April 29 to May 27, a total of 1 million Valeanian soldiers, 300,000 Alidadian soldiers, 500,000 Vacuouan soldiers, 250,000 Valeanian civilians, and 350,000 Alidadian civilians died.

The brutality of the Betrayal caused a massive uproar in Mantle, which had been long beset by ethnic tension between the Mantillians, who composed 35% of the population yet ruled the country, and the Atlesians, who composed the majority. On June 12, following 13 days of massive protests across the kingdom, a coup d'etat overthrew the Mantillian King. In his place came a general who was of Atlesian descent who was crowned as the new King of Mantle. On June 20, Mantle switched sides and declared war on Mistral and Vacuo.

Now, the war was Mantle, Vale, North Dragonica (in exile), Stadia, Alidade, and Volos (in exile) as the Allied Powers versus Vacuo, Mistral, Dragonica, Hachure, and Meridia as the Vacuouan Powers. Azimuth remained neutral.

By October, the war had once again come to a stalemate. The Vale-Vacuo front was stabilized, and the Stadia-Mistral front was stabilized as well.

* * *

Technology played a large role in the brutality of the Great War. Because no major wars had been fought in Remnant since the 1880s, many battlefield leaders had no idea of the brutality new weapons produced. They were still using battle tactics from 100 years prior against weapons such as machine guns, chemical weapons, tanks, and aircraft. The 3rd Vale-Vacuo War had seen these weapons' first test in combat.

The machine gun, invented in 1822 as a hand-cranked rotating gun and then perfected into a recoil-operated single-barrel version in 1860, was first widely used by Vacuouan forces during the war. Their effectiveness resulted in the other countries of Remnant adopting them. By the Great War, handheld submachine guns, also known as machine pistols, had become a reality as well.

The first modern chemical shells were produced by Vacuouan scientists and weapons developers in 1866. In the 3rd Vale-Vacuo War, they were used with great efficiency. However, the only agents that were used were tearing agents, not choking or blistering ones. By the Great War, however...

Tanks had been developed around 1900 by Mantillian forces. After their prowess and capabilities were shown off at the Remnant Exposition Fair of 1908, other states began to develop their own. By 1935, tanks had seen combat in small conflicts, but never in major wars.

The first powered aircraft in Remnant's history was flown on June 1, 1878. During the 3rd Vale-Vacuo War, rudimentary biplanes flew as spotters, though some forward-thinking pilots began to carry pistols and grenades with them so they could shoot enemy spotters and drop explosives on enemy troops. After the war, aircraft technology began to improve. In 1910, the first jet aircraft was flown at an exposition. Even so, piston-engine planes remained dominant until the Great War due to a lack of want to develop the technology further, in part due to lobbying by the railroad industry.

The Great War changed battlefield tactics and weaponry forever in Remnant. Despite this, it would not be until the Faunus War 50 years later that many outdated ideas and traditions finally bit the dust, such as nobility taking charge as officers, horseback cavalry, swords as sidearms, and others. The fact that soldiers in the Great War often carried both modern semi-automatic rifles and longswords, and that cavalry would charge into battle armed with both lancers and pistols was curious. The fact that both of these seemingly anachronistic occurrences were common into the 1990s, when it became even more anachronistic with even more updated weaponry such as missiles and assault rifles, was embarrassing.


	3. The End

On January 12, 1938, the People's Democratic Republic of Azimuth was proclaimed. It rigidly enforced its neutrality, capturing downed pilots on both sides. What was once a way for the Allies to knock the main cause of the war out of it had now become a thorn on the sides of both the Vacuouan Powers and the Allied Powers, and would remain so until the end of the war in 1940.

From February 25 to May 8, the Allied Powers launched the Xuanqiu River offensive. 750,000 Allied troops faced a Vacuouan force of 500,000 along the banks of the river. The main target was the Valeanian border city of Xianqiu. On May 8, the offensive was called off, with Xianqiu liberated from Vacuouan control and the Allies making a gain of just 17 miles of territory, at the cost of 100,000 Allied dead, 125,000 Vacuouan dead, and 55,000 civilian deaths.

On May 19, Mantle renamed itself Atlas, after its most populous ethnic group, and moved its capital to the City of Atlas. On May 27, the former royal family of Mantle was united with the Atlesian dynasty when the daughter of the last Mantillian king, his oldest child, married the Crown Prince, settling various disputes between the two royal families.

On the Alidade-Mistral front, the Allies were much more successful. On May 5, the Hundred Days Offensive was launched. Mistralian forces were crushed and completely pushed out of Alidade and well into their own kingdom. Finally, on August 12, with Allied forces now 77 miles into Mistral, they surrendered and exited the war. Meridia exited soon afterwards on August 18.

On the continent of Lindwurm, Atlas pushed forward with its local allies. North Dragonica was liberated by December 12, 1938, and Volos was liberated by January 18, 1939. On February 25, 1939, Hachure surrendered after being completely taken over by Atlesian forces. This was followed by Dragonica on May 1, 1939. Now all of Lindwurm had been liberated and was now under Allied control.

Vacuo was finally alone in the war, but it kept fighting on. On September 12, 1939, Vacuouan forces attempted to launch a final offensive. It lasted until October 31, and it ended with a decisive defeat for Vacuo and Allied forces now 22 miles deeper into Vacuouan territory at the cost of 85,000 Allied dead, 100,000 Vacuouan dead, and 35,000 civilian deaths.

On December 1, 1939, the Winter Offensive was launched. Badly demoralized, Vacuouan forces collapsed at all fronts. By April 22, 1940, Allied forces were just 85 miles away from the capital of the kingdom.

On April 28, 1940, facing widespread anti-war protests in the capital, the King of Vacuo telephoned the King of Vale and pleaded to surrender, saying he could not let his people be killed anymore in the war. His request was accepted.

On May 12, 1940, Vacuo formally surrendered, and all fighting ceased.

The Great War was finally over.

* * *

The Han ethnic group played a large role in the Great War on both sides. First born in the region that now consists of the Vale-Vacuo border, they were initially migrants before they settled down. Of course, as with many ethnic groups, they soon became far-flung due to the ever present threat of Grimm. By the 1000s, some tribes of the Han had made their way to Mistral, where they were welcomed by the Mistralians with open arms due to their wildly successful agricultural methods and war tactics.

In Vacuo, they generally got along and frequently intermarried with the Vacuouans, producing many biracial persons. The Oasis of Tongmen was the center of Han civilization in Vacuo, and was the capital of Vacuo from its proclamation of existence in 344 A.D. to 1552, when it was moved to the city of Port Vacuo. Even today, Tongmen is still the fourth-largest city in Vacuo, followed by Alenroux as the 3rd, Wukesong as the 2nd, and Port Vacuo as the 1st.

In Mistral, by the 1700s, the Han were a force to be reckoned with. They were the 2nd largest ethnic group in Mistral, and they dominated the northwest of the country, with the Mistralians dominating the southern end due to their seafaring culture that enabled them to also eventually settle in southern Vale in the same century. 6 monarchs have been biracial Han and Mistralian in Mistral's long history out of 9 biracial monarchs.

The naming conventions of the Han depend on the area you reside in. While legally all names in Remnant are recorded in Western naming order, with personal name first and family name last, culturally, Han will go by Eastern naming order, with the family name first. However, in Vale and to a lesser extent in Vacuo, since the 1800s, many Han have begun to refer to themselves with Western naming order in all cases (e.g. Yang Xiao Long and Sun Wukong instead of Xiaolong Yang and Wukong Sun). In Mistral, the Han still often go by the traditional Eastern naming order (e.g. Lie Ren instead of Ren Lie).

* * *

The war, however, would not prove to be the true end.

On October 22, 1940, the Treaty of Vytal was signed. It has since been lauded for the creation of modern anti-Grimm combat and the Vytal Festival. Its conditions for Vacuo, however, were embarrassing, and directly contributed to the start of the Faunus War 46 years later.

Vacuo was stripped of a majority of its military and economic power. It also lost several large islands off of its coast to Vale. When the Vacuouan negotiators saw the conditions, they were appalled, but they were more or less forced to sign due to the fact that if they did not, the war would start again.

Many extreme Vacuouan nationalists seized on the embarrassing conditions and the ensuing economic depression in Vacuo to gain power and attack faunus, including a then-unknown Great War veteran named Gris Manchette. In time, he would gain more and more power through his fiery and often incendiary speeches until he finally became Chancellor of Vacuo in 1968. What followed was 27 years of bloodshed, hatred, and unspeakably horrid atrocities against the faunus of Vacuo, as well as the war that managed to eclipse the Great War in terms of its death toll and destruction, the Faunus War.


End file.
